19 October 2010

Mix tape and mixed up. Say either really quickly without enunciating and I think they might sound the same. Mixed ape. I'll invent a new alcoholic beverage to be consumed only with hamburgers. I shall call it...Mixed Ape!

It's almost 2 am. I left the house (apartment) for maybe ten minutes today to walk the dog and take out the garbage. It was cloudy all day and I didn't know to know this. I probably only woke up at 11 because the mailman (woman) rang the bell with a book from Australia (not for me). A majority of my day was spent playing catch up or is it ketch up? Both are red and remind me of coagulated blood (not really). I am mostly caught up with grades. Finally. I have one assignment from one class to grade until it all begins again this Thursday, the start of the school week. I have a whole unit to put together for each course. It will be done.

What's this all have to do with being mixed up? With mix tapes (iTunes playlist)? I haven't been able to compose one (arrange songs) in ages. Years it seems. I'm trying to fathom the last time such a CD or playlist was made. Why have I been unable to make one? I owe someone a Springsteen mix CD. But what do I owe myself? Since I spend so little time in my car (which seems to be dying too soon) since I teach all online this semester it might be somewhat pointless for the purpose of making driving more enjoyable. Right now I about hate the world for many details I won't elaborate on here. Not right now. I have so little creative drive, yet so much time to create FML.

I suppose to keep this in some sort of theme of the title of the blog, I just listened to the best. song. recently. Paul Allen Band's "A Call to Arms" from This Is War. Truly the band is called 30 Seconds to Mars, but since Jared Leto played Paul Allen in American Psycho, I refer to the band as Paul Allen's. Leto hits some amazing notes and it makes me think him even more awesome than that Gator Boy movie.

Wait. Something's happening. I just added the final song (my first selection) to LMT's Springsteen mix. That's her new nomenclature within my limited community of experts, including only myself. LMT like NPH. A song. A solitary song with the most beautiful intense crooning at its end. Is crooning appropriate for what the Boss bellows from deep within his gut? I don't know but it still about gives me chills. Sometimes I wish the song ended as he comes off one of those notes instead of with the piano's final note.

On my final note, try getting a fucking reservation at Dorsia now you fucking filthy bastard!

I hope I'm back. Does this mean I'm back? Does it take the Boss and two-and-a-half minutes of Bateman to bring me back? I wish. I wish...

15 June 2010

This morning, after my mother left for work without saying good-bye, I went back o sleep for forty-five minutes and had a dream, a terrible, foreboding, foreshadowing dream while sleeping in my old bedroom in the basement:

In the room was a bin teeming with insects, spiders, and snakes. The bin was suddenly open, or I opened it, and all these creatures of Pandora's Box began spilling out. Most noticeable was a black rattler snake with faint yellow bands. I couldn't remember if it was poisonous, but the rattles made me think it was, so recapturing this bugger without getting bit was a priority.

I sort of coaxed the snake into another container, except by time its tail was in the bin, its head was already slithering out another edge of the bucket. It's like an endless loop of ineffective action, like pushing a boulder uphill only to always have it roll back down.

Then my father is in the dream, as if he's Steve Irwin, only he isn't grabbing the snakes head the right way, so I'm deathly worried he's going to be bitten by the beasts huge venomy fangs. The thing even has tail fangs (thanks, Splice). It looks like something bad is about to happen and then...

In what you and I agree is reality, my phone rings. It is work. I am out of sorts, and the signal cuts out because I'm in the basement. I am worried.

My sub, who I'm appreciative of, did not give the handouts I had printed for class today and I didn't inform the division office I wouldn't be in class because I thought I was golden because I had arranged for a sub to cover the start of each class. My students, like the terrors of the box, found their way to the division office, possibly in a panic because I made a big deal out of the work sheet getting completed (which I mostly impressed upon them to scare them into showing up) and then I got that damn call...

I'm guessing I should have canceled class altogether. Or I should have come to New York for a few short days while the entire immediate (and a bunch of the extended) family was gathered for probably the last time in a while. Or I should have found transport back to my car parked in Maryland? But I shouldn't worry too much, should I? I'm leaving there soon, right? A new location, a new job, a new dean?

The only part of the Pandora myth that was not true is that there was no hope in that box. Not really, not now.

December: My girlfriend has graduated from her Licensed Practical Nursing Program (but is still delivering "pizza" from one of those disgusting conveyor belt "oven" chains). I cried at her graduation.

April: I supposedly am teaching two summer classes, if no full-time asses steal them from me because they couldn't plan ahead and then don't have consideration for people who are counting on these two courses for their survival. As it is, the Online Writing Lab is going away for good, so I need a new second job.

February: I do have my third and mostly favorite job at the comic book store as the back issue organizational consultant. The "fill a comic book long box for $22.50 with tax sale" last holiday season really, really, screwed up the back issue bins.

Last month: And then there is this. A few weeks back I decided to look up "adjunct problems" on Google and found these brilliant sites written by adjuncts and professors. Mostly lots of great stories about the wows (both good and ill) of teaching college "students".

Today: One of my former profs told me he/she had his/her first belly laugh today when a student had cited Etal in their bibliography. Awesome.

Two Hours Ago: Finally, there is this: alot, which was brought to my attention by Ectomoplasmosis:

"The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people's grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I'd normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world."

Four days ago: One of my friends and former grad school colleagues wrote this little ditty about the semester ending. I think she's finally leaving NAU after 30 years as a grad student and other things.

02 December 2009

I must say I am impressed with my friend's new blog I convinced her to create: 3Liters Per Day. The push for its creation is all I take credit for; the rest is all her.

I hope to see more of this excellence in the future. It's funny, it's sad. It's plain powerful.

Her Thanksgiving 2009 post, titled Creases, paints an accurate (Re: vivid, somewhat disturbing) picture of some (Re: probably many) post-nuclear families (Re: consisting of something other than mom, dad, kids, and maybe Nana) of the turn of the millennium. Distant, divorced, divorcing strangers (Re: family) in the TV of reality, true reality television more fucked up and more real than that shit on CBS, E!, or Fox. I believe she is wrong about the holiday experience existing without masks because it seems that's what her family's holidays are about. There's probably plenty of writhing too, though the chains and screams are more or less silent and the only thing fleshless is the turkey after the first serving.

I've known her for three years, but I might count time by how many relationships she's had. Brilliantly introspective, the author also reveals something relationships that's probably timeless as far as some relationships go, but also paints a vivid picture of the her experiences with boys, as she calls them still. Perhaps because she sits at the children's table at 30. What are they to her and where is the one who really won't leave? Wait, they leave her?

Yes, her relationships are almost always 'legitimately complicated,' as she writes, and this makes for great stories, great pathos, and something to talk and think about as we might ponder our own relationship with our relationships and what we want from life. It's complicated. Legitimately so.

Fig. 1: Here is a picture of a saguaro cactus at the Anthem shopping outlets I took in May 2008 before exiting Arizona with no intention to live there again.

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About Me

A hardtraveling hero (somehow without having done anything he considers heroic), he is well-known for his predilection for being on the road.
He greatly fears both Mark! Alpert’s wrath and being stuck in one location for too long. If you catch him talking to himself, he’ll tell you he simply has a penchant for intelligent conversation.
He joined the ArmzRace in early 2006. He teaches at America's community colleges so he may influence the minds of America’s youth in those bastions of brainwashing: classrooms. (We’ll see how that works out …).
He likes run-on sentences cleverly averted with excessive punctuation (parentheses and the infamous ellipses). He also likes to haver on and on in emails and other writings of his. He likes powerful women and cannot wait for the next woman president of the United States so he can have a scandalous affair with her.
Learn more about his adventures on his very own blog: HardtravelingHero, and follow his rants just too damn off the wall for the Armzrace at BestMorningEver.

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